Press Releases

Industry’s first cross-platform, out-of-the-box support for action buttons in push notifications and widgets enable brands to extend value and deeper engagement outside of apps

PORTLAND, Ore., – August 27, 2014 – Urban Airship, the global leader in Mobile Relationship Management, today announced major solution enhancements including the industry’s first cross-platform support for widgets and button-enabled interactive notifications in iOS 8 and rich notifications in Android 4.3 and Amazon Fire OS. Brands can deliver more value and drive deeper engagement outside of apps—on device lock screens and in the Notification Center—by offering greater interaction and choice through this new push notification format and, in turn, gain more immediate insight into what customers care about to drive higher conversions. With Urban Airship, interactive notification buttons can easily drive users to take specific actions with deep-links to different in-app or mobile web landing pages where every click can assign or remove user attributes for multi-touch automated campaigns and more responsive, relevant and actionable mobile experiences.

“Interactive notifications take push messaging from informative and hopefully targeted alerts, to the primary way users can choose-their-own-adventure with mobile experiences that adapt to their needs,” said Brent Hieggelke, CMO, Urban Airship. “These messaging-originated user interactions will soon be more important than organic use of static app content, telling businesses what customers want more or less of within their immediate context and moment of need.”

Urban Airship’s support for message center-style widgets enable brands to gain front-and-center visibility in the Today View of the iOS 8 Notification Center or anywhere in the Android experience. Urban Airship’s drop-in widgets can be easily tailored to deliver extremely targeted and dynamic information for at-a-glance access by users, joining landing pages and in-app message centers as methods to get rich content in front of customers.

Other new enhancements to Urban Airship’s solution include event analytics for tracking user activities, such as button taps on interactive notifications and in-app conversions. By directly and indirectly attributing users’ goal completions to each campaign, businesses can better understand the impact of push messaging to drive greater engagement and ROI. A new A/B testing capability leverages this event data to help businesses optimize messaging’s impact on conversion goals.

Initially available through an API, Urban Airship’s support for iOS 8 interactive notifications is now integrated into business user workflows in its intuitive UI, including 13 pre-defined action buttons for more rapid adoption and deployment. Business users can easily create, target, launch and optimize the complete messaging experience with out-of-the-box capabilities to create deep-linked interactive pushes, capture attributes for user clicks, define automation rules and real-time triggers, optimize messaging performance and track customizable conversion goals across digital channels. In addition, Urban Airship now supports native social sharing integration, enabling users to easily share interactive notifications and app content to aid in app acquisition efforts.

Customer & Partner Quotes

“The marketing automation, dynamic segmentation and iBeacon targeting Urban Airship introduced earlier this year, are perfectly poised to take interactive notifications to the next level,” said Alex Rutherford, head of mobile sportsbook, William Hill Plc. (LON:WMH). “The ability to deliver superior, targeted mobile experiences that adapt to users responses and anticipate what they need next will widen the lead of mobile-first thinking firms.”

"Since incorporating Urban Airship’s in-app message center into our app and enabling users to 'star' stories to receive updates and personalized notifications, we’ve seen engagement soar, including a 500% increase in live video streaming," said Peter Roybal, head of mobile product, ABC News. “Interactive Notifications will allow us to extend this personalization into the notification itself, using Follow and Share buttons to increase personal curation and socially promote our content and brand.”

“For some of our clients, the notification strategy has become more important than the app itself. Interactivity within a notification will only put more importance on notification strategies,” said Michael Griffith, director of user experience, Bottle Rocket Apps (a WPP company).

“Interactive buttons that enable users to take actions, such as viewing product categories associated with a sale, or socially sharing the sale notification itself, give users more of what they want and incentivize the behaviors we want to see,” said Scott Michaels, executive vice president and partner, Atimi Software.

"Widgets offer an exceptional opportunity for brands to showcase new offers and content in arguably the most accessible and visible area of mobile devices," said Emma Crowe, SVP Strategy, Somo. "Relevance to users will be key in retaining this veritable spotlight."

AvailabilityUrban Airship’s latest solution is available now to select customers through its early access program with general availability in October.

About Us

Urban Airship® is trusted by thousands of businesses to drive growth with digital customer engagement. Every day, marketers and developers depend on Urban Airship to deliver billions of personalized, interactive notifications that inspire interest and drive action across all digital channels. Urban Airship is used by many of the world’s most admired companies, including Adidas, Alaska Airlines, The Home Depot, NBCUniversal, Sky Plc and Zillow.